The fact that "The fire department has given up every hope on protecting the server area and is now trying to protect the surrounding buildings" leads me to believe that the fire didn't start in the server area. Lots of server rooms were destroyed on September 11, for example, but it wasn't the fault of the room's design, or the presence or lack of fire suppression systems. If the whole building is burning down, fire suppression in one room is only going to work until the floor and ceiling collapse.
> In an early chapter, Dave answers a typical geek question, "What Unix distributions do you run on your own systems?" Dave provides a very geeky answer--his Apple PowerBook G4 is running Mac OS X (with Darwin as its core, of course), along with a PC running Windows 2000, Linux Mandrake 8.1, and a web server running Red Hat Linux 7.2--a varied assortment that shows Dave puts the author in authority.
I would argue that running Linux and OS X does not (necessarily) make someone an "authority" on UNIX. Where's his Solaris, SUNOS, HPUX, IRIX, and BSD experience? Has he ever installed cross-platform software? Only using a few machines, I would doubt he's using NIS or NFS. Has he ever?
> If this has happened every 250,000 years, it's obviously not a threat to the existence of life on this planet
There's a big difference between a threat to the existance of life and a threat to human civilization. A non-life-threatening event that destroys civililzation could be just as bad. Humans don't handle abrupt change very well.
From the email: "There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content."
1) The music industry gets a percentage of the price of every blank digital recording media sold in the United States.
2) How can the recording industry (or anyone for that matter) know how many CDRs were used for copying music, and how many for copying data? I've never seen this statistic before, and it reeks of propoganda. It's been months since I burned an audio CD, and I burn several data CDs a week. Musicians don't have as much to worry about as game/software manufacturers:P
Re:A better way - have computers do more work.
on
Just One Page a Day
·
· Score: 2
> In order to make the proofing faster, maybe you could OCR a document 2 or 3 times, and then have only the disagreements proofread.
Why not just have the Minority Reports discarded? Save you time, money, and bandwidth, and it's a flawless plan!
Yeah, we need some sort of futuristic technology (and intelligent quantum-computers) to be able to calculate angles on a handheld ANYTHING. Any chimp could calculate the angles in pool with a TI-82.
(And yes, I am aware that the "future" in QL was 1999.)
How is this funny? It's the same narrow-minded FUD we get whenever the contestisannounced on Slashdot
Re:It's already been settled...
on
Superhero Smackdown
·
· Score: 5, Informative
A friend and I had a discussion about this a whiles back, and I raised the following important points:
1) Batman also had the help of others: a new Robin in the original DKR, and The Flash, Green Arrow, and Plastic Man in DKR2. 2) Superman was working for evil villains oppressing the world's populace. His heart clearly wasn't in the fight. 3) Most importantly, both of these stories take place in an alternate universe, set in years after the end of the traditional "Silver Age" DC universe was closed. It is hard to extrapolate these results to the present-day Modern Age Superheroes.
Another thing to point out, in the current universe, Superman once gave Batman a kryptonite ring, with instructions to use it if he were ever to become evil (a-la Red Kryptonite Superman in the third movie). If there was such a battle, it would likely be because one of the two "switched sides". If so, Batman would likely use the ring to his advantage.
This is a rather persistant urban legend, and I'm surprised it's been modded up so far. Snopes has a debunking. In summary:
Waking the dead is an ancient custom that extends around the world and has existed in Europe for at least the past thousand years. The term refers to the practice of watching over the corpse during the period between death and burial. Partly, this had to do with making sure someone was always around in case the corpse woke up (see our Buried Alive page for numerous stories about premature interments), but the watchers were also there to make sure household animals and assorted vermin were kept off the deceased.
Saved by the bell is a 1930s term from the world of boxing, where a beleaguered fighter being counted out would have his fate delayed by the ringing of the bell to signify the end of the round. Need we mention that although fisticuffs were around in the 1500s, the practice of ringing a bell to end a round wasn't?
Likewise, dead ringer has nothing to do with the prematurely buried signalling their predicament to those still above ground -- the term means an exact double, not someone buried alive. Dead ringer was first used in the late 19th century, with ringer referring to someone's physical double and dead meaning "absolute" (as in dead heat and dead right).
Not really. All NP-hard problems are relatively "easy" if you use a constant-size (and small) set. By the Minesweeper analogy: If the board is 5x5, it's easy to solve. Only by generalizing the problem to an arbitrarily large set, can they show that it actually is NP-complete.
I dont even remember the last time I sent or received anything (besides spam) by USPS. Things I buy online are sent UPS/FedEx. I pay my bills online. I send email to friends and family (or -- GASP -- call them). The US Postal Service could increase the cost of a stamp to ten trillion dollars for all I care.
Just what exactly do geeks have against the Routing Information Protocol?
Let's start with the usual.
1) True distance routing protocols, like RIP, are inherently flawed. It requires a table of the entire network to be stored on each router, requiring precious hard drive or flash memory space.
2) RIP broadcasts its entire table every thirty seconds.
3) The maximum size of a RIP packet is 512 bytes, so any reasonably sized network will have RIP updates sent as multiple packets. This, combined with 2, can add up to a lot of data transfer FAST.
4) Extremely slow convergence
5) Lack of VLSM support in RIP1 (which too many campuses are still using).
6) Lack of configurability where route summarization is concerned.
Slashdot Mirror
"... they are able to set aside enough money to cover the cost themselves ..." ..."
"... they're almost broke
Eh?
The fact that "The fire department has given up every hope on protecting the server area and is now trying to protect the surrounding buildings" leads me to believe that the fire didn't start in the server area. Lots of server rooms were destroyed on September 11, for example, but it wasn't the fault of the room's design, or the presence or lack of fire suppression systems. If the whole building is burning down, fire suppression in one room is only going to work until the floor and ceiling collapse.
My wife was looking up mnemonics for memorizing medical terms the other day, and found this gem:
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
In Fourteen-hundred and ninety-two
Divide that son-of-a-bitch by two
And that's how many watts are in a horsepower.
SpamAssassin should soon include its own Bayesian filters, and Perl support.
> In an early chapter, Dave answers a typical geek question, "What Unix distributions do you run on your own systems?" Dave provides a very geeky answer--his Apple PowerBook G4 is running Mac OS X (with Darwin as its core, of course), along with a PC running Windows 2000, Linux Mandrake 8.1, and a web server running Red Hat Linux 7.2--a varied assortment that shows Dave puts the author in authority.
I would argue that running Linux and OS X does not (necessarily) make someone an "authority" on UNIX. Where's his Solaris, SUNOS, HPUX, IRIX, and BSD experience? Has he ever installed cross-platform software? Only using a few machines, I would doubt he's using NIS or NFS. Has he ever?
I'm sure its not nearly as comprehensive as this UNIX rosetta stone.
> If this has happened every 250,000 years, it's obviously not a threat to the existence of life on this planet
There's a big difference between a threat to the existance of life and a threat to human civilization. A non-life-threatening event that destroys civililzation could be just as bad. Humans don't handle abrupt change very well.
From the email: "There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content."
:P
1) The music industry gets a percentage of the price of every blank digital recording media sold in the United States.
2) How can the recording industry (or anyone for that matter) know how many CDRs were used for copying music, and how many for copying data? I've never seen this statistic before, and it reeks of propoganda. It's been months since I burned an audio CD, and I burn several data CDs a week. Musicians don't have as much to worry about as game/software manufacturers
> In order to make the proofing faster, maybe you could OCR a document 2 or 3 times, and then have only the disagreements proofread.
Why not just have the Minority Reports discarded? Save you time, money, and bandwidth, and it's a flawless plan!
Yeah, we need some sort of futuristic technology (and intelligent quantum-computers) to be able to calculate angles on a handheld ANYTHING. Any chimp could calculate the angles in pool with a TI-82.
(And yes, I am aware that the "future" in QL was 1999.)
> 3.Expensive Software
Isn't this sort of hypocritical? Why would I want to pay money for software to make a Jack O'Lantern of a free operating system's mascot?
Rhinos eat plants!
How is this funny? It's the same narrow-minded FUD we get whenever the contest is announced on Slashdot
A friend and I had a discussion about this a whiles back, and I raised the following important points:
1) Batman also had the help of others: a new Robin in the original DKR, and The Flash, Green Arrow, and Plastic Man in DKR2.
2) Superman was working for evil villains oppressing the world's populace. His heart clearly wasn't in the fight.
3) Most importantly, both of these stories take place in an alternate universe, set in years after the end of the traditional "Silver Age" DC universe was closed. It is hard to extrapolate these results to the present-day Modern Age Superheroes.
Another thing to point out, in the current universe, Superman once gave Batman a kryptonite ring, with instructions to use it if he were ever to become evil (a-la Red Kryptonite Superman in the third movie). If there was such a battle, it would likely be because one of the two "switched sides". If so, Batman would likely use the ring to his advantage.
Why the army would want microscopic pants is beyond me..
This is a rather persistant urban legend, and I'm surprised it's been modded up so far. Snopes has a debunking. In summary:
Waking the dead is an ancient custom that extends around the world and has existed in Europe for at least the past thousand years. The term refers to the practice of watching over the corpse during the period between death and burial. Partly, this had to do with making sure someone was always around in case the corpse woke up (see our Buried Alive page for numerous stories about premature interments), but the watchers were also there to make sure household animals and assorted vermin were kept off the deceased.
Saved by the bell is a 1930s term from the world of boxing, where a beleaguered fighter being counted out would have his fate delayed by the ringing of the bell to signify the end of the round. Need we mention that although fisticuffs were around in the 1500s, the practice of ringing a bell to end a round wasn't?
Likewise, dead ringer has nothing to do with the prematurely buried signalling their predicament to those still above ground -- the term means an exact double, not someone buried alive. Dead ringer was first used in the late 19th century, with ringer referring to someone's physical double and dead meaning "absolute" (as in dead heat and dead right).
Not really. All NP-hard problems are relatively "easy" if you use a constant-size (and small) set. By the Minesweeper analogy: If the board is 5x5, it's easy to solve. Only by generalizing the problem to an arbitrarily large set, can they show that it actually is NP-complete.
x^n doesnt look like much when n is 'small'.
Hey, self: take your own advice! No more assuming you know what you're talking about.
That's a lot of nuclear weapons simulations.
RTFA. That's a lot of protein fold simulations.
How can they charge you for using their cell? IIRC, your service charges you for using other cells, the cell can't directly bill your account.
'Linux [A-Z]{2}' ..'
or
'Linux [[:alpha:]]{2}'
or even more flexibly
'Linux
I dont even remember the last time I sent or received anything (besides spam) by USPS. Things I buy online are sent UPS/FedEx. I pay my bills online. I send email to friends and family (or -- GASP -- call them). The US Postal Service could increase the cost of a stamp to ten trillion dollars for all I care.
"Filmmakers love it because it more closely resembles the film made."
"[Movie-goers] are paying more attention to the fact that the movie will be out on DVD in just four or five months at a rental fee of $4 or $5."
Filmmakers love DVDs, movie-goers love DVDs. Who loses? Popcorn manufacturers.
Just what exactly do geeks have against the Routing Information Protocol?
Let's start with the usual.
1) True distance routing protocols, like RIP, are inherently flawed. It requires a table of the entire network to be stored on each router, requiring precious hard drive or flash memory space.
2) RIP broadcasts its entire table every thirty seconds.
3) The maximum size of a RIP packet is 512 bytes, so any reasonably sized network will have RIP updates sent as multiple packets. This, combined with 2, can add up to a lot of data transfer FAST.
4) Extremely slow convergence
5) Lack of VLSM support in RIP1 (which too many campuses are still using).
6) Lack of configurability where route summarization is concerned.
Oh wait.. were you joking?
"It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing."
-- Boromir, son of Denethor II